Page 48 of The Mercenary's Guide to Mishaps and Romance

“Put your motherfucking hands up!”

I scream, but if I’ve learned anything during this past day it’s that the quicker you think, the faster things turn out well for you. I whip that plastic bag out of my back pocket and yank it over the man’s face before wrapping the handles around his neck.

“What the fuck! What the fuck!” the man starts yelling as I wait for Tavish to do something now that I have him startled. Hissomethingseems to be laughing.

“I’m suffocating. Why are you suffocating me?” the masked man cries as another masked man comes up and shoves his finger straight through the plastic, popping a hole where his mouth goes.

“I love the new look, Cassel. It’s very fitting. Let me poke some eyeholes for you as well,” the new man, who very much sounds like Leland, says.

The bagged man starts blindly smacking the area in front of him. “Don’t you dare jab me in the eyes.”

“Cassel,why? I’m trying to help you,” Leland says as he grabs the bagged guy in a headlock before tightening the bag around his neck since it’d been close to falling off. “I’m helping! Let me help, Cassel!”

“You’re not helping with shit!” Cassel growls as he yanks it off and glowers at me… which is maybe an appropriate response. I’m so tired, running on no sleep, no food, and minimal water… and he literally jumped out to scare me, but now suddenly, he’s looking at me likeI’mthe bad guy?

“I would be annoyed at you, but you both look downright rough,” Cassel says. Even with the mask on, I can see his grimace.

“Pitiful is the word you’re looking for. Tavish, you look pitiful. And why are your eyes so red? They’re creepy. Stop looking at me with them.” Leland takes the bag from Cassel and pulls it over Tavish’s face as the man just submits to it. Maybe he’s as tired as I am.

“Aw, it’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed looking at Tavish.”

“You forgot the airhole,” Cassel says, since the airhole is now on the back of his head.

“I didn’t forget, Cassel. Now, do we have some tape to keep that on?” Leland asks. “It’d be preferable if the tape went over his mouth so he couldn’t speak with his disgusting accent that’s annoying and definitely not sexy. Every time I hear it, it’s like little sound ninjas crawling into my earholes and stabbing my eardrums with teeny cocktail swords.”

I pretend not to notice any of that going on. “I want to say I’m sorry for putting a bag on your head, but as soon as Ithought about it… I realized how embarrassingly insignificant of an attack that was,” I mutter.

“That’s okay, bro,” Cassel reassures me. “We all start somewhere.”

“Ah, the serial killer is back! I didn’t notice you there,” Leland says, like he could have missed that I was the one bagging his friend.

“He’s not a serial killer. You should have seen the way he screamed over shooting off some guy’s finger,” Tavish comments, still in his bag.

“Maybe he’s a serial killer who just really likes fingers,” Leland says. “Anyway. Anyway. Come inside to our torture room.”

I sigh as my exhausted brain finally catches up to what’s happening. “I kind of feel like we jumped out of a plane so we wouldn’t end up at this very location… but then we willingly came here and… I was oddly more comfortable in the plane than on an ATV with a creepy guy named Fred. So what I’m realizing is that we never had to jump out of the airplane or meet Fred at all. Ha…”

Cassel’s head snaps around and he tears his mask off. “Did you… Did you… Did you sayFred?”

“Yeah, I definitely did.”

Cassel shivers.

I stare at him in horror. “What? Is he really a serial killer?”

“Worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“He tried to feed me… squirrel.”

Is that worse? In what worldisthat worse? I mean… obviously, I wouldn’t eat it either, but is that worse than being a serial killer?

“Well, Ellis got right up in there on the ATV. Like you couldn’t have slid some floss between Fred’s booty and Ellis’sbits,” Tavish says as he pulls the bag off his head, which makes Leland tsk.

“Is there like… a police officer I can speak to?” I ask.

“The chief of police is here,” Leland says.

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